Chelating-Agent Enhanced Oil Recovery for Sandstone and Carbonate Reservoirs

Summary Recently low-salinity waterflooding was introduced as an effective enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) method in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. The recovery mechanisms that use low-salinity-water injection are still debatable. The suggested possible mechanisms are: wettability alteration, interfacial-tension (IFT) reduction, multi-ion exchange, and rock dissolution. In this paper, we introduce a new chemical EOR method for sandstone and carbonate reservoirs that will give better recovery than the low-salinity-water injection without treating or diluting seawater. In this study, we introduce a new chemical EOR method that uses chelating agents such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), hydroxyethylethylenediaminetriacetic acid (HEDTA), and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) at high pH values. This is the first time for use of chelating agents as standalone EOR fluids. Coreflood experiments, interfacial and surface tensions, and zeta-potential measurements are performed with DTPA, EDTA, and HEDTA chelating agents. The chelating-agent concentrations used in the study were prepared by diluting the initial concentration of 40 wt% with seawater and injecting it into Berea-sandstone and Indiana-limestone cores of a 6-in. length and a 1.5-in. diameter saturated with crude oil. The coreflooding experiments were performed at 100°C and a 1,000-psi backpressure. Low-salinity-water and seawater injections caused damage to the reservoir because of the calcium sulfate scale deposition during the flooding process. The newly introduced EOR method did not cause calcium sulfate precipitation, and the core permeability was not affected. The core permeability was measured after the flooding process, and the final permeability was higher than the initial permeability in the case of chelating-agent injection. The coreflooding effluent was analyzed for cations with the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) spectroscopy to explain the dissolution-recovery mechanism. The effect of iron minerals on the rock-surface charge was investigated through the measurements of zeta potential for different rocks containing different iron minerals. HEDTA and EDTA chelating agents at 5 wt% concentration prepared in seawater were able to recover more than 20% oil from the initial oil in place from sandstone and carbonate cores. ICP measurements supported the rock-dissolution mechanism because the calcium, magnesium, and iron concentrations in the effluent samples were more than those in the injected fluids. The IFT-reduction mechanism was confirmed by the low IFT values obtained in the case of chelating agents. The type and concentration of chelating agents affected the IFT value. Higher concentrations yielded lower IFT values because of the increase in carboxylic-group concentration. We found that the high-pH chelating agents increased the negative value of zeta potential, which will change the rock toward more water-wet.